The increase of competition between network operators of communications systems and the increase of telecommunication users particularly in the field of mobile communication has attributed to a nearly unappeasable demand for new and improved communication services. In today's information society, the interest in telecommunications in general and, in particular, digital mobile radio telecommunication is increasing for all types of text, speech or data transmission. Recently, exchanging text messages has especially become very popular.
Subscribers, or users, of Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) networks frequently use the GSM short message service (SMS) to communicate with their peer group. Presently, a user sends a SMS-message by selecting a respective menu item on a mobile phone, entering text, entering a telephone number of a recipient and sending the text using the SMS. On most mobile telephones, this procedure has to be repeated for each designated recipient even though the user may transmit the same text. Typically, the user reads a received SMS-message through a similar long and complicated procedure.
Though sending and receiving SMS-messages is popular, there are several deficiencies associated with the present operation. For example, the user cannot simultaneously see a received SMS-message and the text to be sent. Additionally, the user cannot send and receive a SMS-message simultaneously. A user, therefore, may have to remember the content of the received SMS-message to send a response. Even with these deficiencies, the cost of SMS can be expensive with a typical cost for transmitting a SMS-message at about 0.2 Euro.
Another deficiency associated with SMS is the restriction of 160 characters for each SMS-message. Additionally, the user may not receive a confirmation that the SMS-message was received or read by the recipient. Also, sending and receiving SMS-messages may be slowed since SMS-messages are routed via a server in a network backbone of a GSM-network. The server may slow the process by buffering or storing the SMS-message before being transmitted to the recipient.
The above mentioned deficiencies can make correspondence via SMS-messages disadvantageous not only for users but also for a network operator. This is especially true when the correspondence includes the exchange of several subsequent SMS-messages between the users. The disadvantages may increase when more than two users try to communicate via SMS. Essentially, a simultaneous exchange of text is not possible.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art are improvements for communicating via text messages especially for sending and receiving text messages between multiple users.